It was on this account that he felt contrition for not having attended the House on this subject; for there were some cruelties in this traffic which the human imagination could not aggravate.

He had witnessed such scenes over the whole coast of Africa: and he could say, that, if their lordships could only have a sudden glimpse of them, they would be struck with horror; and would be astonished, that they could ever have been permitted to exist.

What then would they say to their continuance year after year, and from age to age?
From information, which he could not dispute, he was warranted in saying, that on this continent husbands were fraudulently and forcibly severed from their wives, and parents from their children; and that all the ties of blood and affection were torn up by the roots.

He had himself seen the unhappy natives put together in heaps in the hold of a ship, where, with every possible attention to them, their situation must have been intolerable.

He had also heard proved, in courts of justice, facts still more dreadful than those which he had seen.